Tuesday, October 25, 2011

Crossplay: Men Can Do It, Too.

Crossplaying is a subset of cosplay, which involves cosplaying a character of the opposite sex. The idea is to look just like that character, even though you aren’t the same sex.

If you are a woman, this means minimizing the breasts, making the face more masculine, and well, looking like a guy. It’s not that hard of a task, right? It’s no surprise that the majority of crossplayers seem to be women.

If you are a guy, it’s a different story altogether. Male-Female crossplays are seldom done well, and seldom attempted.

Physically, men and women are different. Men have sharper, straighter faces, longer limbs, and bodies that are more angular, whereas women are softer; have more curves, and shorter limbs. In typical anime, the girls are cute and petite and the boys are equally feminine. Now, the odds are in favor of whom?

The guys who still attempt MtF crossplays, I laud you for trying, and some of you nearly made it. But you stopped at a point you shouldn’t have.

After looking at many, many, many images of MtFcrossplay on the interwebs, I have compiled a list of obvious, yet overlooked things that ruin an otherwise good crossplay.

Stubble: So, you shaved for your crossplay. No problem, right? Wrong. The area where the hair was is still very visible, especially on film. Cover it up with makeup.

No Makeup: Makeup is important when cosplaying, even more-so when crossplaying. Makeup is essential to cover up the areas where hair grows and any blemishes.